Survived a drunk driver crash as a passenger — now I barely recognize myself in the mirror
I'm twenty years old and I almost didn't make it to twenty-one.
Back in the spring I was a passenger in a car driven by someone I trusted. Turned out he'd been drinking heavily — blew way over the legal limit when officers finally tested him at the scene. I was unconscious before I even understood what was happening.
I woke up in a trauma unit in a city I'd never been to because the nearest hospital couldn't handle what was wrong with me. Both bones in my lower leg were shattered. My pelvis was fractured in two places. I had a collapsed lung and internal bleeding they had to go in and stop surgically — twice. I was on a ventilator for almost five days. My family was told to prepare themselves.
That was several months ago. I can walk now, which the doctors say is genuinely remarkable. I finished outpatient PT last month.
But here's the thing nobody warned me about: I look different now. There's a long surgical scar that runs across my abdomen, another one on my thigh where they had to do a bone graft, and my left leg sits at a slightly different angle than my right. I was really active before — played recreational soccer, hiked a lot — and when I catch my reflection I just feel like a stranger is looking back at me.
I know I should be grateful. I am grateful. But I'm also grieving the body I had before, and I feel almost guilty for caring about that when I'm alive.
Has anyone else gone through something like this? How do you even start to make peace with it?